Social recommendations like Facebook shares, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing now take into account a range of social signals when determining website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. It has been estimated that one great post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter orGoogle+.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ a URL has accrued, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by site reviewers [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, company, or products on social media, assess competitor activity and market dominance, identify opportunities for engagement, measure the impact of campaigns, and avert impending crises. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific brands, products, topics, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to monitor trends, volume and sentiments of social conversations, and activity on social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various groups that include online reputation managers, marketing professionals, market researchers, agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have developed tools and solutions that facilitate the monitoring of a wide range of social media channels, enabling you to identify what consumers are saying about your brand allowing you to respond to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. For more details, go here:
(Do you know how to effectively track your social signals?)
In this article, we look at a simple plugin for WordPress users for tracking social media signals and increasing your social media influence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the tool measures and tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s job is simple … change more reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that anyone can operate … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ websites over a period of three months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. From these tests, they were able to notice a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in better search rankings, increased web traffic and increased revenue!)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to change more red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know which social marketing campaigns need you to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you centrally track and monitor social activity across leading social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and Digg.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WP users with a number of features. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro shows updated stats right on your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updating. Update the plugin in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Low server resource consumption. The plugin generates reports fast, using little hosting resources. The tool also displays the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by category, publishing date, post authors, or by post type.
- Export Data: You can export and plot data in Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just change all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments users have submitted regarding Social Metrics Pro:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Plugin Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This allows you to run Social Metrics Pro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information here:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives website owners instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and shows them where and how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized social media marketing campaigns.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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